


The Eye of the Storm

by IneffableAlien



Category: Good Omens (TV), The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Angst, Apocalypse, Aziraphale Whump (Good Omens), Body Horror, Dark, Dark Crowley (Good Omens), Eldritch, Gen, Jonathan Sims whump, Rating May Change, Spoilers, Tags May Change, ambivalent ending
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:40:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24777055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IneffableAlien/pseuds/IneffableAlien
Summary: “This is not your Armageddon,” said Adam weakly, sounding more like a child than ever.  “I think … I think something else beat you to it.  Something bad.”While representatives of Heaven and Hell convene on an airbase in England, a man in Scotland unwittingly unleashes something much older upon their world.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Martin Blackwood & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 53
Kudos: 135





	1. An Unexpected Dread

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WaldosAkimbo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WaldosAkimbo/gifts).



> I was originally considering leaving this a one-shot, but I just have too many ideas for it. Stay tuned for Jonmartin POV. I'm mapping out the plot now.
> 
> Anyway, **I have NOT abandoned my Rent AU.** I just had a couple bad weeks there for personal reasons, and I am just starting to get back to normal. _So don't ask me why I'm writing this when I have WIP's to finish, but here we are, so enjoy!_
> 
> Thank you to the Planet Glamtron and OLHTS servers for encouraging me!

What business has a world with only six thousand years under its belt got even thinking about ending on terms written during its time?

It’s barely just been born.

She can throw around like She’s the “One” God all She wants; it’s Her world, She gets to edit the cosmic history books, but She knows damn well there are things older, and more sinister, than gods, and worlds older than Hers. Long before humans, those anxiety-bloodied chess pawns of Her creation, countless forms of existence throughout universes have lived, and died, and dreamed, and desired.

And feared.

Narcissistic insects humans are, they believe only they feel fear. All things fear. Animals fear, alien species fear—fear is a basic building block of evolution. And Fears ruled long before She burst into being.

Did She know what was happening from Her throne, while the angels and demons She formed scurried preparing for their supposed Great War with no feedback from an absentee mother? Or was it that those who worked in darkness to bring about a new way were so far removed from Her light that She couldn’t see their actions?

When the Archangel Gabriel, and Beelzebub, a Prince of Hell, materialized on the airbase, ready to thrust clumsily at the stuck start button of their planned Apocalypse, they were mostly just annoyed. Maybe they had a vague sense of their respective heads being on some broad metaphorical, bureaucratic chopping block, but they weren’t scared. Everything was going to be fine. This was fine.

They shot each other a look as their individual modes of transport diffused into ozone: Gabriel’s lavender-white lightning, Beelzebub’s rippling hellfire. To any Entity older than the God the pair served or reviled, they were not as impressive as they might seem to the immortals and mortals collected on the pavement before them. Gabriel and Beelzebub were little more than human in the many eyes (whether Beholding or Blind, as they may be) of the Old Ones, and not only in their current corporations, either.

Specks, the lot of them.

Beelzebub and Gabriel, for their part, had no way of knowing this, nor would it have occurred to them to remember that information in this moment. It would have seemed irrelevant to their purposes.

“Lord Beelzebub,” said Crowley, the demon they approached now amongst the gathered crowd. He was another small thing, in the ineffable (they had that part right, anyway) scheme. “What an honor.” Crowley’s tone was falsely light, and the sarcasm positively dripped off the way his body bowed.

“Crowley,” said Beelzebub flatly. “The traitor.”

“That’s not a nice word,” he whined.

Gabriel circled nearby, his expression taut. He took measured steps away from the others, and Beelzebub was struck with the odd knowledge that the powerful Archangel was unfathomably lonely. _Where did that come from?,_ they wondered, ignoring the intrusive ill-timed thought. “All the other words I have for you are worse,” they said instead to Crowley, warningly. _“Where’szz_ the boy?” they demanded. Their demonic animal aspect was raging, the buzz of flies and corruption crawling into their voice.

Crowley still hadn’t straightened from his bow, and he quirked his head at the boy who had been brought into this world to be the Antichrist of their weak ritual now. Crowley was mugging with his mouth, hiding his trepidation behind a mocking front.

“That one,” Gabriel finally spoke, pointing gleefully. He stepped toward the boy with a tacky grin plastered across his face. “Adam Young.” Beelzebub’s eyes bored into Adam from behind Gabriel.

Beelzebub tilted their head, and gave the smile that one gives when one is clearly not getting out of having to talk to a child, and also really, really hates children.

To be fair, the resulting vibe was actually not too far off Gabriel’s.

“Hi,” Gabriel forced out, continuing to address Adam. “Young man,” he said, “Armageddon must … restart.”

Had it ever stopped? Even for an instant?

There were more in the crowd, including the Principality Aziraphale, and a mess of humans. The focus of all was much too tight on Adam Young. The faint crackling like a forest fire in the distance, the strange but as yet still subtle howling of wind, the utter sense of _wrongness_ —normally would have been so obvious, but those present were already shaken and their attentions laser-focused on what they assumed was the most important thing in the world right now.

They should have been right, but timing is such a funny thing.

There are such things with such awful senses of humor.

Maybe an hour from Tadfield, at this very same moment, a tragedy was taking place. The man incanting that tragedy into truth was powerful enough to make it real, but powerless to make it stop.

Wrong boy indeed. Wrong man. But still no speck or insect took notice.

“Right now,” Gabriel continued.

And that was when the sky broke.

The dread didn’t find Gabriel instantaneously. It was too new a sense for him to recognize, and too easy to mistake for just being impressed. “Oh, wow,” he said at the sudden shift in reality, “nice one.” Gabriel looked up, then froze when he spotted the seeping black tendrils parting a red field that had once been a sunset. It looked very much not at all like vines growing up the side of a brick building.

The air weeped louder, and the tentacles grew in shifting maddening colors never before seen, to block out all light. But the ground did not shake dramatically, no giant red beast shouted. Very little in the way of the type of horrors that can easily be described with words sprouted into sight. Everything was simply, deeply, uncannily, terrifyingly not what it was.

“Is it supposed to look like that?” Gabriel breathed, forgetting that he didn’t need to breathe.

“Well,” Beelzebub said, their buzzing full force like a stutter, _“it’szz_ not like we’ve ever done _thiszz_ before, but … I don’t believe it’s _supposzzed_ to _feel_ like that.”

“Right,” said Gabriel quietly. He was doing something, with his corporation, something new, which he would later learn was called trembling. “And, that feeling is … ?”

_“‘Scared,’”_ said Adam. “You’re scared. But, I didn’t do that.”

“Something’s wrong,” Crowley pointed out helpfully.

“No shit,” said Gabriel, disgusted.

The small assembly of humans seemed to remember how to use words. “What is happening?” shrieked the one named Newt.

“It’s the End of the World!” a woman, Anathema, yelled, like it was the most obvious thing imaginable. And perhaps it was now, considering how unimaginable things had become in a moment.

Crowley grimaced as he was nearly knocked back by a gust of wind. “This is not the End of the World,” he growled. “It’s something worse.”

Madame Tracy, an older woman with frizzy dyed red hair, piped up. “What’s worse than the End of the World?”

“The start of one,” Crowley mumbled in shock.

Aziraphale did a double take at his demon partner. “Is it your side doing this?” he asked. (They both knew that Crowley had no _side_ at this juncture, but the language came out of habit.)

Crowley winced. “No,” he said. “This feels older.”

“How the Heaven would you know that?” Beelzebub snapped.

“I, I don’t know,” Crowley said. “I just Know, okay?”

Gabriel scoffed. “There is no ‘older,’” he said edgily. “We’ve been here since the beginning.”

“Are you sure of that?” Aziraphale murmured.

“I don’t even know if this is evil, or hellish,” said Crowley. “It’s far worse.”

“What's worse than evil?” Beelzebub asked, their bravado slipping.

“I have no idea,” Crowley confessed.

“This is not your Armageddon,” said Adam weakly, sounding more like a child than ever. “I think … I think something else beat you to it. Something bad.”

The words hung on choking air. The next thing Crowley said was something Aziraphale had heard him say before, in aggravation, but never without immediately correcting himself.

It was this: **“Oh, God.”**

Crowley reeled, almost tripping on his own legs as he stretched back to stare at the heavens. He started to laugh, humorless and devastated.

“What on earth— Crowley,” Aziraphale said in a rush, “why are you laughing at a time like this??”

“Because of the sky, angel,” said Crowley, bordering on hysterics. He giggled, somehow. “Look at the sky.

_“It’s looking back.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Go visit[waldos-art](https://waldos-art.tumblr.com/post/622089965550092288/please-go-read-the-eye-of-the-storm-by), they just dropped this amazing fanart on me!_
> 
> xx [siliconealien](http://siliconealien.tumblr.com)


	2. Motivation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two sets of travelers roam the new post-Apocalyptic world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **THIS FIC IS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR ALL OF TMA!** It begins with the season 4 finale and continues through season 5!

_I—OPEN—THE DOOR!_

Those were the last words of the recitation that started the terrible new world. Meaningless periods stretched into what might have been called months, if time still worked in a land aflame with sunlessness.

Sound still worked, at least as it was perceived by the mind (not the ear anymore, no, physical senses were not to be trusted). The howling, now with jagged degrees of painful music, had never stopped.

_It—never—stopped._

And where did that creaking come from? Was it actually this cabin, the doors, the wood … or had the things that ruled now simply guessed that it was a noise that “creeped out” basic humans in its eeriness and thus stoked fear (they would have been right)?

The Archivist, which had once been a man named Jonathan Sims, was tired, but he did not sleep. Martin, his boyfriend, who was as human as anyone else, occasionally slept, but he did not recommend it. Sleep no longer gave relief.

(It might have been different for demons and other things that did not come to sleep naturally but chose it, but it would not have occurred to Jon to Know this.)

Yes, let’s call him Jon. He beats himself up enough about being less Jon these days.

“I’m mourning a world I killed,” Jon said, not that long ago, “and we’re all trapped in its rotting corpse.”

Jon was admittedly a little prone to the dramatic when he got maudlin, but it was more than understandable under the extreme circumstances. Martin would try to reassure Jon and ease some of his guilt, but there was not a whole lot to say to things like that. Jon had been tricked into causing all of this, used as a “glorious tool,” but that fixed nothing nor made the hurt less.

Jon was a thing that fed on true stories of the paranormal, fed on the very words themselves. They dripped down into tape recorders, mundane, “old-timey”-looking ones that kept inviting themselves near him regardless of how many times he disposed of them. But something in Jon’s latest “meal” was different: The last statement Jon spoke aloud had galvanized him with the information therein. Jon knew, it was time to stop hiding in creaky cabins while burning in self-hatred.

“I wanted to _leave,”_ Jon told Martin in amazement. He was referring to how the statement made him feel. He meant that he wanted to leave their sick parody of a safe house, a prison that somehow sapped any joy or energy as surely as it sheltered them.

_Let us stretch our legs in this hellscape outside our shack … let us **try.**_

Martin did not hesitate. “I’ve actually had a couple of bags packed for a while now,” he said excitedly. Sometime back, when Jon had said he needed more time to think about facing the pain of going anywhere and Martin replied that he was good at waiting, Martin had meant it, but that didn’t mean he had been happy about it.

For the first time in a long while, Martin gave a genuine smile. He loved Jon, and he believed in Jon. Martin had _never_ seen a monster when he looked at Jon, not even when Jon was just beginning to comprehend his craving for statements and had done irreparable psychological harm to people in order to get his fix.

Those who Jon Compelled to tell their tales against their will back then never escaped recurring nightmares of the events after crossing paths with him. But where everyone else had despised Jon for this discovery, Martin was kind, and helpful, and trusted Jon when he fought to get his urges under control; how awful must it have felt having a mysterious metaphysical addiction hoisted on him practically overnight?

Jon smiled back, shakily but no less real, because with a reason like Martin—gentle, forgiving Martin—Jon believed he could do more than just curl up beneath a table to rot.

Jon wanted revenge, on so many vile things, but especially his former boss, Elias Bouchard (actually, he was Jonah Magnus, but Magnus had been wearing the skinsuit of Elias Bouchard for so long and so well that it was hard to think of him any other way), the man who had nudged Jon along his path and orchestrated making the new world so.

Jon was not a heroic man. Maybe revenge wasn’t the best motivator for potentially saving the world, but it was a start.

“There’s nothing left to save,” Gabriel announced bitterly to no one, poking at an impossible campfire with a stick. By all rights in this world, a fire should have probably either refused to light, or razed their temporary site with uncontrolled desolation, but the immortal members of their ragtag little clan were not entirely devoid of angelic and demonic miracles. Their magic was not nearly as effective as it had been in the world before, but it gave them serious advantages over the tortured souls outside their circle.

“What _makeszz_ you so sure?” asked Beelzebub, settling in on the blackened ground beside him.

Gabriel rubbed his face with the back of his arm against the billowing smoke. It stung his nose; he felt things now, mortal inconveniences. If there was a way back to Heaven and Hell, the immortals who had been on earth while the Fears were released had not found it. Gabriel had learned almost immediately that his true form was useless in this reality. None of his eyes could tolerate the geometries of the Old Ones’ dimensions. He tried to find the planes in which he was fluent, but he couldn’t See for the blinding agony.

Gabriel did not know what had become of beings who were in Heaven or Hell when It happened, but he believed he knew one thing, in what was left of his broken heart:

 _She_ was not fucking listening.

Gabriel ignored Beelzebub’s question. “Aren’t you supposed to be just thrilled about this?” he gritted out. “You basically won, right?”

Beelzebub spun on Gabriel like he’d slapped them. _“Thiszz_ isn’t what we wanted!” they said. “Besides, do you think I wanted to spend eternity watching you cry in front of a fire?”

“Then don’t watch,” Gabriel said with a scowl. “Nobody asked you to, what? _Check_ on me? Gloat?”

Beelzebub made a sound in their throat somewhere between a sob and a growl. “We’re all in the same bloody boat now,” they reminded him. “We’re all cut off from … _otherszz_ like us.” Beelzebub shook their head rapidly as though trying to knock something loose. They would _not_ think of her, not now.

“There’s no ‘us,’” Gabriel simmered. “It’s just me, another pathetic excuse for an angel, a couple of demons, and a bunch of gross mortals.”

“‘A couple of _demonszz,’”_ Beelzebub shot back. “So I’m the same as him, is what you’re saying. That one”—they gestured at Crowley, who was stretched out on the ground, appearing to be sleeping with his sunglasses on—“he isn’t even a local counselor, not to mention he betrayed the whole of Hell, I am a _Lord—”_

“How nice for you,” Gabriel said with a sneer. “I hear that and a dollar will get you a cup of coffee.”

“First and foremost,” said Beelzebub, “if you think you can get a cup of coffee in a country that **had** _dollarszz,_ for one dollar, then you really didn’t spend enough time getting your hands dirty here, and I’ll have you know we were quite proud of Hell’s Cloud Macchiato initiative, and furthermore, well …” Beelzebub seemed to have run out of steam. “Well,” they said, “just—fuck you, Gabriel.

“If you’re _zzso_ Heaven-bent on being alone,” Beelzebub continued, “I’m not about to try to rescue you from it.”

Gabriel narrowed his gaze into the fire, his features softening into an expression of quiet desperation, but Beelzebub wasn’t about to let themself be beat up verbally all night (or whatever time of Dark it was). Their legs stuttered hesitantly as they stood, but they ultimately stalked away.

Beelzebub dumped themself onto the ground next to Crowley. They mussed their hair with one hand, then hardly flinched when Crowley said, “Are you sure you want to sit next to me? I’m not even a local counselor, you know.”

“I knew you were awake,” Beelzebub grumbled. “Heard anything good while you were eavesdropping?”

Crowley sat up and shrugged. “Once a wanker, always a wanker,” he said, nodding toward the campfire.

“I guess you would know,” said Beelzebub. “So how long should we let the _meatbagszz_ sleep?” Behind them, the unconscious humans moaned fitfully from their beds of dirt and nests of rags.

“Dunno,” said Crowley. “Honestly? I can’t tell if these rests are helping them or making the trip harder.”

Beelzebub shifted, and there was something surprisingly delicate in the way they looked at Crowley now, like his feelings mattered. “We could leave them, you know.” It was almost a whisper.

“I know,” Crowley croaked into the pitch night-day. 

“But?” Beelzebub prompted. “They’re slowing us down.”

Crowley dug one snakeskin heel into a thick squirming pile of sludge at his feet that had not been there before. He glanced over at Aziraphale, who had wandered to sit on a small hill where he evidently was counting the bleeding irises over his head. Crowley guessed that each time one of them winked out of view, the angel would start over counting. They were running out of ways to distract themselves from significantly more horrifying sights than some sky eyes dripping ichor.

Crowley missed stars.

He grimaced. “They might still prove useful?”

“Interesting,” said Beelzebub. “I seem to recall you tried to save them once.”

“People change,” said Crowley, not without a tinge of sadness.

“We’re not people,” said Beelzebub.

“Maybe now more than ever,” Crowley murmured.

“Are you still a demon?” Beelzebub asked opaquely.

Crowley lifted his lip in a snarl, but it was halfhearted. “What kind of question is that?”

“Why are we traveling this way?” Beelzebub asked.

“How are those two things related?”

 _“Where are you getting to lead us this way?”_ Beelzebub pried.

Crowley opened his mouth, said nothing. Then, “We’re walking to that thing, you know that.” He flailed aggressively at a looming tower in the distance.

“But why??” Beelzebub kept pressing.

“I don’t know!” Crowley snapped, throwing his hands up in the air. “I don’t understand anything anymore!”

“Well, you certainly seem to know more than the rest of us!” Beelzebub’s tone was accusatory.

“I don’t know why!” Crowley barely managed not to shout. He hissed, tossing a startled look back at the sleeping humans, but none stirred. He really did not wish to add their company to this conversation.

Crowley removed his sunglasses, squeezing his serpentine eyes shut and pinching the bridge of his nose. “Everything’s changed,” he said, honestly on the verge of tears. “I mean, obviously everything’s changed, but this is something else.”

“You might as well talk to me,” Beelzebub sighed. “We might as well not hate each other, all things considered.”

“I don’t know _how_ to talk about it, though,” Crowley said, his throat thick. “I don’t know the words.”

There was a long pause. “Are you praying to Her for guidance?” Beelzebub asked at last, hushed now.

“No,” said Crowley. “Did you really think She’d want me now?”

“No,” said Beelzebub miserably, “but you were never really Lucifer’s, either.”

Beelzebub stood to return to camp, brushing themself off as they did. “You probably should have picked a side while you still could,” they said, “before Something Else picked for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> xx [siliconealien](http://siliconealien.tumblr.com)


	3. Monsters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The airbase crew discover an object that changes everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am loving working on this story! I can't tell you for sure yet how many chapters it's going to be, but there IS a plot now, and this baby is gonna be _long._
> 
> Last reminder I plan to give that this fic runs parallel to the current (and final) season of TMA. Every chapter will have spoilers, as the entire premise is, "What if The Eye had opened at the _exact same time_ as Armageddidn't?"
> 
> Enjoy!! Thanks for your support!

Jon had tried sleeping once, before they started traveling.

Back in the old cabin, curtains drawn, Jon had still seen all of the suffering in the world. The Archivist was an avatar of the Entity that was The Eye, and he was forced to watch ceaselessly all that It saw. Part of why he hadn’t wanted to venture outside was because he knew the hateful video feedback would only increase with the added stimuli. In other words, Jon was not omnipresent, and there was a difference between seeing, and seeing on top of being there.

The Eye was a cruel voyeur, observing from a distance as it drank in fears and misery. _Is that what I was aiming to be?,_ Jon wondered, thinking about his initial desire to camp out in the safe house indefinitely despite seeing it all regardless.

One time, still in the cabin, Martin had been tossing and turning on the dingy floral couch, obviously having a nightmare. When Jon had tried everything to wake him up, he realized that whatever governed sleep now was the only thing that decided when sleep was through. Fortunately for Martin, he couldn’t even remember the dream.

But Jon did.

Jon hadn’t meant to Look without permission, it had just been right there—and maybe it was even right to check for danger, not knowing the mechanics of post-Apocalyptic dreams (or maybe that was trying to justify it). He’d expected to see monsters in Martin’s subconscious, crawling worms, or the deaths of old friends. They’d survived much nightmare fuel to remember.

Instead, Jon was taken aback by seeing himself before him. But not Jon’s nightmare form, the many-eyed shadow that relived people’s worst memories in sleep with them, and not Jon now, either. Jon watched Martin’s dream about Jon as he was back at the Institute when they met, when Martin had been his assistant. This dream Jon wore clean clothes, and had a professional haircut, and wasn’t covered face and body with scars.

And he was mean.

 _Well, would you look at that,_ Jon’s mind treacherously supplied, _you’re so bothered about being the literal nightmare monster that you are now that it never even occurred to you that you’ve always been one._

Jon kept watch until Martin woke up, that was all that he could do. He saw how Martin cried in his sleep, and he Saw how it was all his fault.

So Jon suspected that sleep was designed to always be unpleasant now. But the whole world wasn’t exactly pleasant. Jon fully expected to have nightmares, but he thought he might prefer a new one to the ongoing nightmare that was life now. He would rest.

Jon _wished_ he’d had a nightmare.

He probably should have known that there were far greater torments than nightmares. Jon dreamed of Martin, and of a life together. He dreamed that he’d never read that damned statement from Jonah Magnus. Hell, it would have been a happy dream if it had been about him gouging his own eyes out before that paper ever found its way into his hands.

Jon awoke remembering the quote: _Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt._

Martin had tucked in behind him, the big spoon, and he stroked up Jon’s back tenderly. “Wow, I’m jealous,” Martin said fondly. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look so peaceful.”

Martin frowned when Jon made an odd cracking sound in his throat, and then Jon twisted until he was facing him. Jon slung his arms around Martin’s neck, pulling himself up enough to completely bury his face under Martin’s chin, and Martin felt the hot tears on his skin. Martin wrapped his arms around Jon and nuzzled his hair. “It’s okay, Jon,” he murmured.

“We should have been given a turn,” Jon said, sounding sleep-confused and a little wild. At first Martin didn’t understand, and his heart sank when Jon’s meaning became clear to him. “We should have been given _one_ good day,” he whimpered.

Jon didn’t try to sleep again after that. It held considerably less succor than the alternative, which was to walk relentlessly in the direction of the distant tower which could be seen from any spot on earth—and which could see any spot in turn. It was _the_ tower, what had once been the Magnus Institute. It was the Panopticon, but one could not perceive its surrounding cage, for the same reason that people in Times Square couldn’t see America.

More importantly, it had been aligned with The Eye since the Institute’s inception, and working in the archives was where Jon’s transformation had begun.

Jon and Martin were journeying toward the Archivist’s domain, and they weren’t the only ones.

Aziraphale shifted his rucksack more comfortably across his shoulders. He had been carrying it long enough that planes both containing his human skin and his wings were beginning to chafe. It was essentially a WWII British military backpack, except that one would be hard-pressed to find another in tartan.

“I don’t see why you brought that,” Crowley said grumpily. “What could we possibly need? Even the humans don’t get hungry anymore.”

“They don’t get weary, either,” Aziraphale pointed out, “but that has not prevented you from stopping us, ostensibly to sleep.”

“Ehh,” Crowley let out a noncommittal creak. “You could at least let me carry it for you, to spare _me_ having to watch you wiggle around all uncomfortable.”

“I would rather bear my own burden for the same reason I brought it,” said Aziraphale with a touch of drama: “one does not undertake a walking quest without provisions.”

“Right,” said Crowley, _“it simply is not done,_ yeah? Wouldn’t want to break Apocalyptic etiquette.”

“Just so,” said Aziraphale, not trying to keep the smile out of his voice. This banter was good. It was akin to normal. Which was why he regretted the accidental edge that slipped into his next phrase: “And I am as I have always been.”

Crowley hesitated, his mouth tight. “Care to elaborate what you mean by that?” he asked quietly.

Aziraphale rubbed the back of his hand. “Oh,” he said, “you know me—creature of comfort and all that.” He abruptly assumed a cheerier tone. “I was thinking there might be a nice Châteauneuf-du-Pape in there later, maybe we could—”

“You know it will be spiders,” said Crowley. “You’re deflecting. You mean, at least _one_ of us is as we’ve always been.” Crowley paused meaningfully. “Didn’t you?”

“Well, and of course you just ‘know’ that now, don’t you?” Aziraphale countered dryly.

“This is ridiculous,” said Crowley. “I never thought I’d see the day that you were sounding like Beelzebub. Explain to me, how is it that having someone in the group who’s got a good track record with his hunches, is a bad thing? Should we have just, sat down, at the airbase, and waited for some creature to extinct us?”

“Of course not,” said Aziraphale. “Oh, Crowley, I do appreciate all of your … _‘hunches,’_ and what a clever group leader you are.” Crowley rolled his eyes. “I mean, Heaven forbid— well. You have certainly diverted us around some nightmares that the rest of us would never have saw coming.”

“And the thanks I get is paranoia,” said Crowley blandly.

That stung. “Now I’m paranoid?” Aziraphale huffed. Crowley was silent, and although Aziraphale knew he would not say sorry, Aziraphale still noticed the apology in the way Crowley looked down at the ground, and that meant something after so long together. Aziraphale smiled weakly, and unslung his bag to root in it. “How about we see what we have here? Perhaps this might cheer us up. Surely it can’t be spiders _every_ time, I—” Aziraphale found something, and furrowed his brow. “What’s this?”

“Angel,” Crowley warned, “I swear to Something, if you pull a rabbit out of there—”

“No, no,” said Aziraphale, “I was being serious, it—it doesn’t appear to be anything dangerous exactly, just, odd, but—I know I didn’t mean to miracle it.”

Crowley motioned with his hands to get on with it.

Aziraphale reached into his bag, and handed Crowley a vintage tape recorder.

“What have you got there, laddie?” interjected Shadwell, who was somehow still alive. The old man was not nearly intelligent enough for that detail to make sense to Crowley. Shadwell had just caught up with them when they slowed for Aziraphale to look in his bag, and Madame Tracy came with him.

Crowley popped open the tape recorder, but the cassette inside it was unmarked. He shut the lid and turned the device over. There was nothing noteworthy about it, but for the fact that it had materialized out of thin air.

“Well, go on,” said Madame Tracy, fascinated. “Hit ‘play’!”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” said Anathema. By this point the entire group had gathered. Not all of them drew near (it had taken an Apocalypse to make them all tolerant of one another, after all), but they all observed with great curiosity.

“Why on earth not?” asked Shadwell. “Times like these, we can’t afford to ignore _any_ unusual things a-happening!”

“Got a lot of time then, have you?” Crowley mumbled.

The young man who had been meant to be the Antichrist, but for most intents and purposes was just a charismatic boy now, spoke up from behind Anathema. “Actually,” said Adam Young darkly, “we’ve got loads of it.”

“Point taken,” Crowley sighed. No one said anything for a moment, and when nobody offered another opinion, Crowley started to play the tape.

It contained the voices of two adult men. Whatever their conversation had been, it was ongoing, as though the recorder had simply turned on all by itself in the middle of it. It was not a casual everyday conversation; they were talking about a terror attack, and it would seem that this was no world news story, but an incident with which they were _very_ intimately familiar.

Crowley frowned, rewinding a few seconds. “Did that man just say something about eating tape?”

Three of Adam’s friends who were at the airbase accompanied the group now. The girl, Pepper, said, “Let it play through! We don’t know how long the tape is or how much time we have to safely stand here.”

Crowley glared. “Just so we’re clear,” he said, “I’m doing that now because I had already thought of it, not because you told me to do it.” He pointed at Newt, who had been shuffling closer. “And _you_ —stay back from this thing.”

Crowley played the tape uninterrupted, and when one of the men on it seemed to leave the room they were in, the other spoke directly into the recorder for the first time. **“Audio recording by Jonathan Sims,”** said the voice, **“The Archivist.”** There was a beat. **“Statement begins.”**

“That sound,” Aziraphale said softly, “we heard that crackle at the airbase, at the time the situation was so dire it hardly registered, but …”

The man was reading some sort of letter. In fact, Crowley noted humorlessly, it sounded like a classic villain movie speech. The author detailed his plan to rule a ruined earth, and the man reading droned on—initially sounding panicked, then resignedly intrigued, and finally, as enthusiastic as if the words had been his own, although they seemed to be addressed directly to him.

The monologuing went on and on, until harsh static could be heard, and a frightening soullessness leeched into the man’s voice.

**“You who watch and know and understand none … You who listen and hear and will not comprehend …”**

_That’s a summoning,_ Crowley thought, his heart pounding in his ribcage. _Not one like I ever heard, but the bones are the same …_ Crowley felt deeply that there was nothing of Hell in this ritual, but then, what was there? Crowley didn’t know this magic, it felt too raw, too—primal … _But what has more primitive origins than a demon?,_ Crowley thought, as a fresh terror crept up his spine. _What is this **thing?**_

“Turn that off,” said Anathema quickly. “This is it, this part, this is how he did it. Turn it _off.”_

“It’s not like it can do it again, now is it?” Crowley hissed.

“My dear boy,” Aziraphale said carefully, “I believe the young lady’s right. Even though the damage was already done, nothing good could come out of hearing it.”

Crowley instinctively held the recorder tighter to his chest, though he did not understand his own reaction, and it wasn’t like anyone had made a move to take it from him or anything. “I need to hear it,” he said. “I need this.”

Aziraphale looked stunned. “What …”

**“… all that is fear and all that is terror and all that is the awful dread that crawls and chokes and blinds and falls and twists and leaves and hides and weaves and burns and hunts and rips and bleeds and dies! _Come to us!_**

****

****

**_“I—OPEN—THE DOOR!”_ **

There was the sound of an explosion on the recording, followed by such dissonant screeching that Crowley scrambled to hit “stop.” Everyone stared, dead-eyed, at the machine.

Madame Tracy spoke at last. “So what do we do now?” she asked. “At least somebody wants to help us, right? Could God have put that where you found it?”

Crowley snorted. “God doesn’t help,” he said, “that’s Her whole schtick. But I don’t believe the thing behind this really cares, either. I think,” said Crowley, weighing his words, “this is a thing that sees us as entertaining.”

As Aziraphale watched, some _thing_ happened with Crowley, a very blink-and-you-missed-it thing. Almost like _he_ was a recording, and he’d hit some glitch in his visual effects and it faded immediately. “But,” Crowley continued obliviously, “we _are_ going the right way—because they’re heading to that tower, too. It’s London. They’re headed from … somewhere … they’re outside England, I almost know …”

 _“Why?”_ shouted Beelzebub over the group. _“Why_ would we go to them?”

“W-well,” said Aziraphale, feeling all the discontent that was rising amongst the company, “at least we don’t have too far to go, if it’s London. And we’ll get there before them, so if they are even aware of us also then we won’t have to worry about some kind of ambush …”

“We won’t get there before them,” said Crowley unhappily. “Distance is just as broken as, as hunger, or tiredness.” Crowley rubbed his forehead. “If anything I’d wager we’ll get there around the same time.”

Nobody asked the question, but everyone knew they were all thinking it: _How do you know that?_ The humans wondered, why don’t the other ones act like they know things like that? And the immortals knew that even if this sudden Knowing did make any sense to them, _miracles didn’t_ feel _like that,_ regardless of whether they came from demons, or angels.

 _Then what is he?_ Aziraphale felt guilty that this question had been getting repeated in the back of his head before today. It didn’t feel like a thought, or a worry, it felt like something completely outside of him was telling him not to let his guard down, because something was not right. _You old fool,_ Aziraphale thought at himself, _you think you’re so intelligent, but if you don’t know who the real Crowley is by now, then you don’t understand what_ anything _is, that’s your baseline, he’s your anchor for six thousand years …_

Aziraphale had disavowed Crowley before, though, before he knew that Heaven had never been what he thought it was, before his faith had been shattered.

_Why would he say he “needed” to hear something so evil, what did that mean, you were so sure he was different, this isn’t just a demon this is Crowley **why** …_

In this strange world, everyone was turning out to be a stranger.

Crowley was still talking, and Aziraphale had zoned out completely. He hoped it didn’t show, as he tuned back in. “Do you really think that will put the world back the way it was?” Newt was asking.

“Well, we won’t know until we try,” said Crowley. “And either way—it’s one less monster in the world.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> xx [siliconealien](http://siliconealien.tumblr.com)


	4. The First Mark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> War is hell.

It wasn’t anything like coming over a hill and seeing what was at the bottom. It was just—places, that weren’t there, until they were.

There was a hitch in their walks as each individually came to the same realization, but it was Anathema who voiced it first. “Is that … what I think it is??”

“No,” muttered Newt, who was not answering Anathema’s question at all, just trying to convince himself. “No, no, no …”

Crowley stared emptily ahead, and Aziraphale shifted his backpack off his shoulders onto the dirty ground, beyond even being aware of it. Beelzebub stormed on Crowley, nearly shoving him. “You idiot!” they shouted. “You’ve led us in a circle!”

By now they all knew it to be true: they were standing in clear view of the abandoned airbase in Tadfield.

“I didn’t,” Crowley sighed. Aziraphale could not recall the last time he had seen Crowley look so devoid of any optimism. Crowley shook his head back and forth, eyes never leaving the base. The bags under his eyes were visible beneath the sunglasses. He looked weak, maybe even hungry, but Aziraphale could not be sure, as he had never seen Crowley wear hunger before.

It did not suit him.

“No wonder you said we’ll get there at the same time as the other ones!” Beelzebub ranted. “If you intend to take us the wrong way!”

“It wasn’t the wrong way,” said Crowley, “it was _the wrong way._ We were going about things _the wrong way.”_

“Isn’t that conveniently ominous,” said Beelzebub.

Aziraphale’s hand hovered above Crowley’s arm. “Crowley? Just what is going on?”

“Remember how you said I was so ‘clever’ for figuring out how to avoid all the nightmares?”

“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale choked out, his eyes wide.

“Yup,” said Crowley. He turned to face the others. “So, uh, bit of bad news, I’m afraid,” he said. “First trip didn’t count.”

“Didn’t count?!” Shadwell echoed. “It sure felt like it counted to me!”

“We were supposed to go through the nightmares,” Adam piped up. “Not around.”

Crowley gaped. “You knew that?” he asked in shock. “And you just, didn’t feel the need to bring something like that to our attention?”

“Nope,” said Adam cryptically, “I only know now that you know.”

“Oh, come on!” Gabriel shouted. Gabriel had been speaking less and less, wallowing in self-imposed isolation, and it jerked Crowley’s attention to hear him now. It had almost started to feel like Gabriel wasn’t even with the group anymore. He pointed at Adam, insistent on receiving a proper explanation. “How could _that_ one”—he swept an arm up and down in Crowley’s direction—“know more about what’s going on than _you?”_

Adam pondered this. “I ‘spect it’s ‘cause I don’t know that thing,” he said, indicating the sky and its many Eyes, “and this world belongs to It.” Adam nodded toward Crowley. “But I know all about _him,”_ he said.

“Right,” said Gabriel in a low tone, stepping closer to Crowley, “you know about him, and he’s the only one here who has this sick world all figured out. So maybe you know what kind of deal he made, and what game he’s playing.”

“I’m not!” said Crowley, putting his palms up in front of him and taking a step back. “I, I don’t know what’s going on, I didn’t ask for any of this—this sudden knowledge!”

“Oh, boohoo,” Gabriel raged, “I’m sure it’s not like the Serpent of Eden would be lying or anything!”

“Gabriel, that’s enough!” said Aziraphale, stepping forward. “Regardless of whatever may be happening here, any sort of infighting will absolutely not solve it!”

“I’m not ‘in’ with him!” Gabriel waved Aziraphale back. “I’m a fucking Archangel! I’m not ‘in’ with any of you! And I don’t even know what’s happened to anyone—I don’t know if Sandalphon is okay, I don’t know if Michael is okay, but this conniving little snake gets to be okay, and _She_ decided that!”

“Shut up, all of you!” shouted Pepper, stepping hastily in the center of the group. “Don’t you all hear that?”

A stillness came over the group as everyone stopped to listen, and the pipe music played louder.

Crowley and Aziraphale, Beelzebub, Gabriel, Anathema and Newt, Shadwell, Madame Tracy, and four children had found themselves right back where they started their journey toward what they didn’t know was the Magnus Institute. They were at the airbase in Tadfield, England.

Jonathan Sims and Martin Blackwood had just reached a trench, which was, until the world changed, the Kinloss Barracks in Scotland.

This put the two teams equidistant from London.

Cities didn’t really exist anymore. Countries didn’t exist. All that existed were Fears, and the domains thereof. And now, both locations representing the potential for war were in the domain of the Entity which was The Slaughter. The Slaughter, that is, the unmitigated terror that hangs over those who know violence and pain are coming but don’t know when.

Crowley and Aziraphale and the rest had witnessed the Four Horsemen of the biblical Apocalypse at that airbase. One by one, all but Death had been sent back into unreality by the children who faced them down. It had looked like a win, or at least something.

But the War who took physical form through the static energy of the thoughts of man was no more The Slaughter than a house cat was a tiger. It might even be more accurate to say the reverse was true, because, after all, all tigers are cats, but not all cats are tigers; and although The Slaughter was not War, she—War—was only one avatar of The Slaughter. Tadfield’s War, in the body of a beautiful redheaded woman, was an amalgamation of words, and The Slaughter was so much older than the written word.

The world was still “big,” just not in any way that made sense according to the laws of physics. And so it was, that both groups of nomads would not yet meet, even though they were potentially just as far from the tower (so long as they passed through something like “parallel” nightmares), because they simply were not in the same location. They were instead in the same domain(s) of The Slaughter, separated in that different avatars might have ruled them, whilst simultaneously one and the same in that they were The Slaughter Itself.

Jon and Martin had begun to enter the trench. Jon’s tape recorder turned itself off, for whatever reason. That was one thing Jon found he could not Know, although he was the type to analyze everything, so sometimes he theorized based on context clues: why did The Eye, having won the world, still need to listen, and how did it choose when and where to do so?

“Aren’t you scared?” Martin asked, as the two started to walk through the trench, the sounds of war amplified around them.

Jon glanced up at the sky without raising his head as he spoke. “It’s hard to explain, Martin,” he said, not particularly wanting to have this conversation, especially when he was forced to shout to even be heard by the person right behind him. “Short answer is yes.”

“And the long answer?” Martin prompted, not accepting that response.

Jon’s mouth quirked in a straight line, almost imperceptibly. This was going to be a feelings talk, which was already not his strongest suit, in the middle of an active battlefield, no less. The bagpipes in the distance were growing louder the deeper they moved along the trenches. “I am scared,” he said slowly, “because I would hate to see you get hurt. You and I aren’t going to die, but you will thoroughly feel it if you get caught in the crossfire.” He paused. “And moreover, you would be marked by The Slaughter. And that’s one of the last Entities I’d want to see try and take you.”

“And you? You’d feel it, if you got shot?” Martin kept on.

Jon took a deep breath. “Yes, Martin, I can feel it,” was all he said.

Martin apparently accepted this as an adequate reply, plus the rising volume of their surroundings was making it impossible to keep talking. (Jon was secretly glad that Martin evidently had not noticed some of his exact words and phrases.)

 _But the pleasure outweighs the pain,_ Jon thought to himself.

One of the worst things about the new world to Jon was how his avatar instincts _(monstrous instincts, just say it,_ he thought) craved it. He was often forced to think about Helen Richardson, a woman who had come to him seemingly so long ago as a statement giver, only to be claimed by The Spiral and take her place as the new Distortion. The Distortion was an avatar of that Entity, much like The Eye had needed multiple people over centuries to fill the role of its avatar, the Archivist. As the Distortion, Jon had watched Helen move from something not far off a surprised human filling a job for which she had not wanted to apply, to a clearly and at times suspiciously helpful nonhuman being, to what Jon now saw as a completely apathetic and sometimes violent monster.

 _The fear is her sustenance,_ Jon thought. He would not allow himself to admit the empathy he had for her out loud. He needed to keep that psychological boundary between the other avatars and himself, because if Jon admitted he understood them, he believed that meant he was them.

 _Is it inevitable?,_ Jon wondered, not for the first or even fiftieth time. _I still don’t understand how much free will I have, how much_ anyone _has._

__

__

_And then what happens to Martin when my goal at last is simply to feed, and his goal is to take that away from me?_

Jon and Martin reached the heart of the trench, and the tape recorder clicked back on with the first grenade.

“Crowley, move!” Aziraphale cried, slamming Crowley into a concrete wall as the bullets peppered where he had been standing.

The group ran behind the nuclear bunker, just close enough to the domain outskirts to have a moment to possibly figure out what they should do next. It had all been so sudden; they could hear the pipes before, they could smell fire, but it had felt hazy like a dream.

“This is insane!” Madame Tracy shouted. “Who would be attacking the airbase, of all places? It isn’t even active!”

Aziraphale didn’t like the frail way Crowley was leaning against the wall. “They’re not really attacking the airbase,” Crowley moaned. “They’re not even really a ‘they.’ It’s the location, it’s like a symbol, or, or an energy source, for … something.”

There were two other young boys with the group, and one of them spoke up now. “So what do we do?” asked Brian. “Sgt. Shadwell?”

Shadwell, whose full title was “Witchfinder Sergeant,” sputtered. “Ah, well, ya see, I’m not really an army man …”

“He’s not that kind of sergeant,” Newt dove to Shadwell’s rescue.

“Actually,” said the last boy, who was called Wensleydale, “even if you’re not army, ‘sergeant’ is a military rank, so you still have experience, and you could still think of a plan.”

“Is it moving closer?” Beelzebub interrupted. Some sort of veil was pressing against the bunch as the sounds of war grew louder.

“I, I don’t know,” said Crowley, “maybe? I think, we’re so close, we’re already in the nightmare, so … here it is?”

“So it isn’t real!” said Gabriel. “If it’s a nightmare, let’s just run through it!”

“It’s real,” said Crowley hurriedly. “I don’t know what that means, or how dangerous ‘real’ is, since nothing makes sense anymore … but if you bolt straight across that airbase, you will get shot.”

“Gabriel,” said Aziraphale, “do you really want to find out if we can heal ourselves in this world?”

“No, maybe I want to find out that I can’t,” Gabriel said indignantly. “Maybe the only way out of here is to get discorporated, you ever think of that?”

“Well, be my guest,” Crowley yelled, over the encroaching sounds of explosions. “Why don’t you go find out?”

“Crowley!” Aziraphale scolded.

“Don’t do it,” Beelzebub said unexpectedly, and everyone turned to listen. “You all seem to be forgetting that I have commanded armies in Hell. In fact,” they glared at Gabriel, “some of you seem to be forgetting that you’ve fought in wars yourselves, so maybe you should know how to pull yourselves together.” Beelzebub narrowed their eyes as they took in the airbase from their position, noting each structure and viable shelter.

It was an impossible war, the kind of images that lurk more in memories than in real life. The ground was overrun with tanks rolling on bone-stuffed gears, and grotesque creatures smeared themselves with the blood of humans who feebly raced, and bellowed, and should have died of their injuries, but instead were returned time and time again to feel their infinite destruction.

“There’s no fighting them,” Crowley said, “you have to know that.”

Beelzebub gave a terse nod. “But there are ways through them,” they said. “But you need to tell me, if we go through this—will it be any different on the other side?”

“I think so,” said Crowley nervously, “I’m pretty sure, I … I think if we pass through the whole airbase and get past the fence that it will be like this isn’t even happening.”

“Well then,” said Beelzebub, “it’s time to move out, everyone.”

It was terrifying. Even if it had resembled a regular human battlefield, the immortals were stricken with the knowledge that they had no idea what it would mean to be wounded or killed in this world. But when they came out the other side, looking shellshocked and as if the color had been torn out of them, they were whole and unharmed.

“Right,” Crowley breathed, “okay. That was a thing. Well,” he continued, “let’s get on with it.”

He was stopped by the sound of crying.

“I’m sorry, I hate crying in front of people, I hate it, I hate this,” said a small voice. Pepper was stretching her tights up above her calf, and Crowley felt sick when he already saw that the stripe design on the right side was drenched and dyed a deep red. Pepper sat down on the ground, shaking and wiping her nose with the back of her hand.

“I think the bullet’s still in there,” she said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> xx [siliconealien](http://siliconealien.tumblr.com)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [PodFic - The Eye of the Storm By IneffableAlien](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24988504) by [WaldosAkimbo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WaldosAkimbo/pseuds/WaldosAkimbo)




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